“Choosing from a vast spectrum of classes, races, and professions, you explore a procedurally-generated world, filled with towns, dungeons, ruins, and other locations.”

– Christian Valentin (Pocket Gamer)

Creator Thomas Biskup announces new title and crowdfunding completion at Roguelike Celebration

SAN FRANCISCO – Nov. 13, 2017 – Legendary roguelikeADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery) is being reborn as Ultimate ADOM – sporting all-new graphics, infinitely customizable characters, and native support for gamepads and touch screens. ADOM creator Thomas Biskup made this momentous announcement during the Roguelike Celebration in San Francisco:Based on Unity, Ultimate ADOM will still have the Universal ADOM engine running underneath – ensuring that gameplay stays faithful to the classic game players know and love. Currently in development, Ultimate ADOM is due in Q4 2018.

ADOM fans will be able to save their progress across multiple devices for the first time, including desktop operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux), current game consoles (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One), and mobile operating systems (iOS, Android). The new engine will also make it possible for players to experiment with detailed crafting and modding systems and also learn a vastly more flexible magic system. Possession, cloning, grafting body parts, and animating inanimate items like swords (and even walls and other in-world objects) are all viable strategies.

“Time and time again, I considered writing a true successor to ADOM. However, its 25-year-old codebase – with a rather complex internal architecture – usually got in the way of a straightforward sequel,” says Dr.-Ing. Thomas Biskup of Team ADOM. “And so the idea for Ultimate ADOM was born – the most recent attempt to create the ultimate roguelike RPG based on Unity / C#. With a truly multi-platform programming environment – including support for all modern platforms and a customized Entity-Component-Architecture that I developed over the past 12 months – Ultimate ADOM will be based around one generic game/rules engine with ultimate customizability for different platforms and play styles.”

In development since 1994, ADOM is one of the most successful roguelikes ever created – boasting a brilliant mix of story, RPG, exploration, and intensely strategic and flexible combat. The Steam version introduced various Deluxe features like achievements, difficulty level customization, and various play modes (e.g., story mode allowing players to save and restore games, weekly challenge game, exploration mode). ADOM was revitalized in 2012 with an immensely successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo – allowing Team ADOM to offer the game in both ASCII and graphical modes. During the Roguelike Celebration, Thomas Biskup announced that all rewards and stretch goals have been fulfilled.

ADOM: The Story So FarFor many generations, the world lived in peace and harmony – disturbed only by whatever petty struggles troubled the various races. Many centuries after those ancient events, Chaos once again arose and gathered dark forces – attempting a second incursion into the world. Dark times seemed to lie ahead. Sages even suspected that Gaethra the Creator might be awakening…

How did Chaos come into being if everything is Gaethra’s dream? Just a passing nightmare? Or a sign of madness…? Adventurers started to wander through the known lands, challenging the forces of Chaos and sometimes falling to their lure. Battles ensued, and finally a Champion of the free people arose to defeat the overlord known as Andor Drakon. Equipped with mighty artifacts, the champion challenged Andor Drakon to a final decisive battle and then something went awry. Exactly what is left to speculation. Maybe the champion fell to a trick of Chaos. Maybe an artifact caused a cosmic chain reaction. Maybe Gaethra awoke. We probably will never know for sure.

Where there once was but one Ancardia, now there are limitless variants of Ancardia co-existing in space and time. Powerful mana wielders have even discovered ways to connect to souls in these other realities – even for but a brief moment. The unifying element seems to be the continuing struggle between Order and Chaos – once limited to Ancardia, now a grim reality on countless worlds very similar to each other. Before you, the entrance to the ultimate ancient domains of mystery loom. Are you brave enough to step in?

Explore a vast randomized world with endless options: hundreds of dungeons, over 460 monsters, more than 840 base item types with infinite variations, 47 spells, 41 skills, and 100 talents!

Dive into a deep storyline about the battle between Order and Chaos – and discover a multitude of endings.

Grapple with corruption: Special mutations make you more powerful but also bring you closer to your end; power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Be part of 25 years of development – and immerse yourself in an unprecedented level of depth and detail.

Play the game with both ASCII and tiled graphics + audio (with 61 hand-crafted musical scores at the time of this writing).

Partake in a fantastic and lively community.

Enjoy the fruits of a full-time development team’s labor.

Additional Features: Ultimate ADOM

Experience the world of ADOM with brand-new graphics and visuals in a much richer, bigger, and more flexible environment build.

Immerse yourself in the endless ADOM multiverse in a variety of games customized for different styles of play – ranging from a highly flexible RPG system on desktop computers and slightly more casual location-based experience on mobile devices to additional action-oriented variations on consoles and handhelds.

Tinker and experiment with updated magic, crafting, and modification systems.

Mix and match more character customizations than those offered in classic ADOM.

Pricing & AvailabilityADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) [Deluxe] is available on Steam (Windows, Mac, Linux) for $14.99. Ultimate ADOM is currently in development with an expected release window of Q4 2018.

About Thomas Biskup & Team ADOMAs a student in Witten, Germany, Thomas Biskup wanted to learn C programming and needed a project. He had always loved roguelikes for their randomness, and he realized that programming his own game from scratch might be a lot of fun – so he began working on ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) in 1992. The first version was released on Usenet in 1994. Over the next couple of versions, the community grew from zero to tens of thousands as more and more folks discovered Usenet (and the Internet in general). Between 1996 and 1998, ADOM was voted as the most successful downloadable game of 1997 – beating all AAA titles at that time. (Some releases yielded more than a million downloads!) In 2012, Team ADOM (a five-member development team) was established and ran a very successful Indiegogo campaign that received more than $90,000 in funding. Now, at the end of 2017, Team ADOM has fulfilled all its crowdfunding promises and is looking forward to continuing development on both ADOM and Ultimate ADOM.

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